June 9, 2014

Ant #265. One week in Russia.

It's been one week since I came to Russia.
June 2nd-6th I was in Moscow, now I'm at my parents home in the small provincial city where I was born.

It is quite useful experience after one year outside the country.

When I was flying to Moscow, I was preparing to feel negativity, to see sad people, I thought that when I get into Domodedovo I will throw up. But when I saw inscriptions on Cyrillics, I started smiling as an idiot and greeting everybody, feeling some looks of disapproval on myself. But I didn't care! Even if I was dying to sleep, I was glad to come back to the hometown (I wasn't born in Moscow, but I consider it as my hometown coz I feel great there). At the airport I was met by a friend, got into his car, and once we left the airport we stuck in a traffic jam. He started screaming at people and showing his middle finger to everyone. I said: "Calm down or someone's gonna kick our asses! ", he took out a gun and said: "No one fucks with us!". I said: "When did you all become that nervous? ", he replied: "It's our life!"

Next 3 days I felt this public aggression even more. I don't know if something really happened there or it's just me after a year in Argentina.

The city itself I loved a lot! I never noticed earlier what a beautiful city I lived in. Everything in it for me was kinda ordinary, and now when I looked at it with the eyes of a tourist, I was really impressed!

Then I met my friends. Finally we had a heart-to-heart talk. One of my friend who recently was arrested on a demonstration, now prepares documents and goes to Spain. Our mutual friend will join him this fall. Two more guys (gays that live together for many years) now actively looking for a possibility of moving to Germany. I don't know if they cam manage it or not, but I wish them a good luck! Another friend, a girl (one of my best friends) wants to try to enter the university in Stockholm, she says that if it won't happen, she will come to Buenos Aires to me.

To be honest, wouldn't say that people there have a despair, no, not at all, they are not deathly scared. I would say that in their eyes I see a kind of hopelessness (though, probably, these feelings are close in fact).

In the city where my parents live the picture was absolutely different.
If in Moscow I mostly talk to the people who have seen the world, with those who went to anti-Putin demonstrations with me, with those who doesn't divide people on white and black, straights and gays, believers and atheists, here, in province, the situation is just horrible. I'm here the third day, but I already want to leave from here. I feel very uncomfortable. Every person told me that I am a traitor, "liberal" and the intellectual lousy, and we were friends with these people since my childhood. I try to stop all discussions about Ukraine and Conchita Wurst before they begin, but people just do not stop, and they don't want to listen to me (thanks to social networks they already know my position). I feel that they were waiting for me to say to my face how much they despise me. All together.

I don't know how to survive 10 more days here, it is very sad and uncomfortable, and the worst thing is that no person shares my views or simply stands up for me when the whole crowd is screaming at me. Wherever I go, whoever I meet, whatever we talk, everything comes to the same end: lynching the tolerant me.